In this talent feature we’re looking at the work of filmmaker Raphael Rogers, who shot an inspiring short film about melting glaciers in Alaska and gives us some useful tips on filming in cold environments. The choice of story elements, the human perspective, filming angles and choice of music caught our attention. (Intro by Sebastian Wöber)
A couple of months and on a whim.. we decided to go and experience Alaska. Being the people that we are we always bring our camera gear on trips. You never know what you’ll find in the wild lands of an alien place. Plane tickets this time of year were incredibly cheap, something like $300 roundtrip from LA to Anchorage. That was for a reason. Almost nothing was open as far as tourist expeditions go. And… it was cold.
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Filming in Cold Environments – Preparation
Preparing ourselves meant many layers of thermals and enough snacks that we could hike a glacier for hours and trudge through mud, water, snow and ice. Also batteries… lots and lots of batteries. You should know that most batteries loose capacity in the cold, so you should also make sure you store them in a way to keep them warm.
As a general rule, if your body can take it, most of the time your camera can take it. I’ll go into the details of the gear below and how we made it work, but I learned that if you’re smart about how you use your gear and where you place it, it will work perfectly.
The Gear & the Challenges
We shot mainly with a Sony A7S II as well as a Sony a6300 on a Beholder DS1 Stabilizer. For drone work we shot with a DJI Phantom 4.
Pro tip: We also own the ikan EC1 Beholder – soooooo much better.
The A7S and the a6300 never went down in the cold. No issues with batteries or anything of the like. There were a few times with the Phantom when it wouldn’t launch and gave me warnings that the battery was too cold. To fix this I would hold the battery up to the car heater and then launch it after a minute or so. Another tip would be to tuck the batteries inside your coat next to your skin while hiking.
Pro tip: For drones, if you’re serious about filming in cold environments, you can get a drone battery heater for the DJI Phantom 3 series. There’s also a DJI inspire 1 battery heater and the new DJI Inspire 2 has self-heating batteries out of the box. Unfortunately there’s no heater for the Phantom 4.
Pro tip 2: Do not heat batteries beyond 104°F (40°C) as they might break.
The most challenging part of filming in Alaska at this time of year turned out to be the rain rather than the cold. My Phantom handled it fine (not recommended!) but we were all soaked by the time it returned home. And I was constantly wiping the lens!
What we learned
Honestly, I would take the ikan EC1 Beholder gimbal to get more stabilized shots. I would also rent real crampons when hiking on the glaciers! So slippery. A lot of this was run and gun so being prepared for it was a guessing game. I think we guessed fairly well even though we had to deal with the weather.
Post-production was all done in Adobe Premiere, including coloring in Lumetri! I’m a fan of the ease of having it all in one place. Our rock star editor killed it. It was definitely a process figuring out how to handle the issue of climate change without twisting the story in any way. We just wanted to tell a real first person story and I think we accomplished that.
The genesis of this film happened on a random road in Seward Alaska and was quite a piece of luck or fate or whatever you want to call it. We didn’t know Rick before we went but it turns out it’s pretty easy to ask someone to tell their story. Most people want to. I hope you enjoy the piece!
Do you have experience and more tips on filming in cold environments. Let us know in the comments.
Featured video created by:
Raphael Rogers, Paul Rennick and Kristin Gerhart

EDIT: Philip wanted to add in regards to his “fast access to audio levels” comment, that it can be done as follow:
Settings-Custom key settings- Custom button (3 is easy to access)-Audio Rec Level. Now you can access your level directly.
The Sony A7s has become the turn-to camera for many smaller run-and-gun purposes due to its size, its video functionality (including proper XAVC S codec, peaking, zebra …) and the incredible low-light performance. In fact, whenever I attend industry meetings like NAB or when I’m giving workshops I’m constantly amazed how omnipresent this camera has become in so little time, after it was introduced about a year ago. It certainly has taken over our cinema5D office here, with every team member using the camera constantly, and me personally owning 2 by now …
The market is much different from 5 years ago, when the Canon 5D Mark II was first introduced, with many more large-sensor cameras to chose from. However, it is fair to say that the Sony A7s has taken the spot of the 5D in the same price bracket, which is easy to see considering how omnipresent the camera is these days.
Late last year, my friend Philip Bloom has given a free Sony A7s workshop at our main site sponsor’s headquarters B&H in New York for a selected few. Attendees were to shoot a short film with the A7s in a short amount of time. Before they went out to gather their footage, Philip ran through the most important settings of the camera which you absolutely need to know in order to shoot proper video with the Sony A7s.
People who are used to shooting with the A7s might know most of what is discussed in this video already. However, I urge every A7s user to watch it – there’s a few things that many people certainly weren’t aware of before:
Some interesting topics covered in this free seminar, among many other things:
• Different gamma curves in different Picture Profiles (e.g. Cine2, Cine3, Cine4 or SLOG2)
• Detail/Sharpness settings
• Dual video file recording with XAVC S and MP4 proxies (which can be transferred to your smartphone to be posted online right away)
• How to expose properly with this camera (avoiding noise)
• Setting up audio for internal and external recording (attention: Philip told me he made a mistake in this seminar – there actually is a way to change audio levels during recording, but you have to assign audio to a custom button to do that)
• Frame guides for different aspect ratios
• external HDMI quirks

Last year AJA surprised us with the announcement of a high quality, affordable, 4K shooting, cinema camera. The AJA Cion was a tool we were looking forward to use and now, after a long wait and after the public release we could finally analyse and test it thoroughly.
Here is our complete AJA Cion review with some awkward surprises and a long list of pro’s and con’s. This is a camera that needs careful observation before the shooting can start. Read on to see all our findings.
If you plan on shooting with the AJA Cion we recommend you read our new article:
10 important tips to help you master the AJA Cion
In this review we will present objective test results from our labs, compare the camera to other contenders, and try to give you a subjective observation of how the camera worked for us.
We will look at the following aspects:
Page 1: Features at a Glance
Page 2: Sensor Tests (& comparison to Blackmagic Production Camera 4K)
Page 3: Ergonomics & Handling
Page 4: Pro’s & Con’s | Conclusion
AJA Cion Review – Features at a Glance
Sensor:
The AJA Cion’s sensor has some great technical features. It is a 4:3 APS-C sized global shutter sensor that upon closer inspection had a striking resemblance to the sensor we find in the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K (We do not claim it is the same sensor). The sensor also performs very similarly in terms of lowlight and dynamic range. More on that later.
Global shutter CMOS sensor
4K pixel readout
22.5mm x 17mm 4:3 APS-C sized sensor (a little smaller than super35)
Recording Formats:
The camera records in the ProRes format. This is fantastic, a great recording format, easy to edit.
Additionally the Cion does 120fps RAW via the 4 SDI ouputs on the back. This didn’t work with the Atomos Shogun in our tests.
Apple ProRes 4444 (up to 30fps) 12-bit
Apple ProRes 422 (up to 60fps) 10-bit
RAW externally (up to 120fps)
Useful Connectors:
The AJA Cion is a camera that gives you lots of connections. The idea of an “open architecture” camera, that is highly compatible is one that any operator will welcome.
6 SDI outputs in total
2 hdmi outputs (one of them supports 4K)
2 XLR balanced analog inputs (with phantom power + dedicated boost), 24bit 48khz
Well positioned headphone jack for audio monitoring
Thunderbolt for direct recording via PC (up to 30fps)
2 LANC connectors for remote control
D-tap connector to power an accessory
and more
Battery (life):
The AJA Cion comes with a 2-pin battery connector behind its back plate so you can install your own V-mount or Anton Bauer battery plate. Battery life is extensive on the Cion. It lasts forever.
Standby time on our fully charged 126Wh V-mount battery: 3h 15m
GO TO PAGE 2 → Sensor Tests
• Page 1: AJA Cion Review – Features at a Glance
• Page 2: AJA Cion Review – Sensor Tests
• Page 3: AJA Cion Review – Ergonomics & Handling
• Page 4: AJA Cion Review – Pro’s & Con’s | Conclusion

The Canon EOS 100D is Canon’s newest entry level DSLR and once again: It also shoots video. I tested the camera and took it out for a walk in the highlands of Scotland.
It’s lightweight, it’s compact, it shoots video. A travel application is the logical conclusion to test this full fledged DSLR.
Beautiful landscapes are a nice thing to shoot. Unfortunately the aliasing the sensor produces makes it less ideal to shoot something that has a lot of detail, like landscapes.
In terms of video quality this camera is similar to the other affordable Canon DSLR’s out there.
So if you’re only looking for this kind of video performance and you don’t care about functionality you will not notice a difference between this one, the new 700D, the 4 year old 7D or anything in between. You can get the Canon EOS T3i for $549 right now (was $400) which offers a very similar look.

Leica M type 240- video review.
(Non of the written here is relevant to the photo section of this camera)
Deep into the 4th year of the HDSLR revolution Leica released the M 240, their full frame camera costing $6950.
Spending a day with the camera left me wondering, was Leica ever talking to any professional cameraman before implementing HD recording for this unit or just decided to “join a trend” without really meaning this camera to be a capable working video tool?.
In my opinion the video quality coming out of the camera is very disappointing and its operation in video mode is not easy/logical. I hope features/video quality can be enhance with a firmware update.